Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi salutes fallen soldiers at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem in a picture published on Oct. 27, 2024. Photo: IDF.
When one of Tzur Kurnedz’s cousins woke from a coma after fighting Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, the first person he asked to see was Kurnedz.
The soldier, who had served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s Golani Brigade and lost most of his unit in the fighting, wanted to speak with someone who could understand what he had just lived through. For Kurnedz, that need was painfully familiar.
Kurnedz, who served in an elite IDF unit and as a sharpshooter during the 2014 Gaza war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge (Tzuk Eitan), had developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) himself. He spent years working through his trauma with the help of family, friends, and body-and-mind therapy. Over time, he came to see how many gaps existed in the support system for former soldiers — and how difficult it was for many to access the tools they needed.
That experience became the foundation for Bishvilenu, a digital platform Kurnedz launched with his wife, Nomi Weiss, a social worker and lawyer, to provide long-term recovery support for soldiers, their families, and their communities.
What began as trauma in Kurnedz’s own life became a resource he could use to help others. “It’s healing. It’s growth,” Kurnedz said. “I wasn’t really willing to share my story before, and now it’s a powerful tool for me to help others.”
In Hebrew, “Bishvilenu” means “for us,” while shvil also means “path” — a fitting name for a platform built around the idea that trauma recovery is not a single intervention, but a long-term process. The app, which is free for soldiers and their families, creates individualized care plans built around three pillars: mind, body, and community. More than 400 IDF soldiers and family members are already using it, and that number continues to grow.
Bishvilenu offers clinically proven practices and tools, including narrative therapy techniques as well as breathing and physical exercises. Weiss serves as vice president and Kurnedz as CEO, but the team behind the platform includes medical and trauma experts from Israel and the United States. Among them are an emotional intelligence coach, a clinical social worker trained in trauma care, and a Brown University professor who previously led PTSD research at the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
As Weiss put it, the couple moved quickly to build a platform that could use technology “as a bridge” to help people receive support and empower themselves in the long process of trauma recovery.
“It’s a place to try to create a shared knowledge from all these trauma experts who have been working in the field,” Weiss said. “We’re the digital infrastructure. We’re not trying to be the trauma experts. We let the NGOs be the trauma experts, with the final say of what exactly their soldiers need, and we build the infrastructure as people who understand trauma. It’s more about having a place for all the expertise to be gathered than for us to try to be another voice in this oversaturated field of trauma experts.”
The need has only grown since Oct. 7.
Tzur Kurnedz, right, during his IDF service. Photo: Provided
A Mounting Crisis
Israel is facing a mounting mental health crisis, with post-traumatic stress disorder rising sharply among soldiers and the broader mental health system under extraordinary strain with no end in sight.
A report released in February 2025 by Israel’s State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, following an audit of mental health care, revealed that in the aftermath of the deadly Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Iron Swords War, approximately 3 million adults in Israel have experienced anxiety, depression, and symptoms of PTSD.
These numbers are astronomical, underscoring the scale of the psychological fallout Israel has faced since Oct. 7. They also point to a mental health system under extraordinary strain, with hundreds of thousands of Israelis expected to seek care in the years ahead.
The scale of the need has overwhelmed existing systems. According to Bishvilenu, more than 70,000 IDF soldiers are on the waiting list for the IDF Rehabilitation Department, including at least 9,539 diagnosed with PTSD. Reuters recently reported that Israel’s Defense Ministry has recorded nearly 40 percent more PTSD cases among Israeli soldiers since September 2023 and expects that number to rise by 180 percent by 2028. Of the 22,300 troops and security personnel currently being treated for war wounds, 60 percent suffer from post-trauma.
The crisis has also brought a rise in suicide attempts. Reuters cited findings from an Israeli parliamentary committee showing that 279 IDF soldiers attempted suicide between January 2024 and July 2025, and that combat soldiers accounted for 78 percent of soldier suicide cases in 2024.
The backlog positions Bishvilenu as part of a familiar Israeli pattern, in which civil society organizations step in to provide support when public systems are overwhelmed.
Weiss said the trauma of the current war has been compounded by public distrust in the government and by the exhaustion of a long conflict.
“People don’t really believe in the government. People don’t trust the people sending them to war,” she said. “Everyone is tired.”
Using Technology for Togetherness
Weiss said that while she and Kurnedz started Bishvilenu for deeply personal reasons, it quickly grew into something much larger than they had expected.
“Each person’s individual journey can also become a resource for others, and we’re trying to create togetherness where trauma creates isolation,” Weiss said.
Bishvilenu is designed not to be a replacement for trauma professionals but rather as a piece of critical digital infrastructure connecting soldiers, families, and the NGOs already working with them.
Since Oct. 7, NGOs and other organizations have offered soldiers short-term trauma support, often using their own specialized methods and rarely sharing data or insights with one another. Bishvilenu is designed to fill that gap.
The platform is distributed through NGOs working with IDF soldiers and gives soldiers and their families access to clinically validated tools focused on mental, physical, and community-based healing.
For the NGOs, the app extends the relationship with soldiers and their families beyond initial intervention. It helps organizations stay in contact, monitor needs, and measure outcomes. Soldiers, meanwhile, receive tools for self-assessment and self-regulation.
Bishvilenu now works with 10 NGOs, including the Jerusalem-based organization OneFamily, and is in talks to partner with about 10 more.
“We’re at a point now where NGOs are calling us,” she said, “and we see that we have a service we can offer that is really meaningful.”
The platform, she said, can identify red flags during treatment or signal when soldiers need specific aftercare. “For soldiers and families, it gives them tools to assess themselves, help themselves, and regain a sense of agency over their own process.”
The Bishvilenu team and its volunteers working in a bomb shelter. Photo: Provided
Behind the platform’s technology is a simpler idea that Kurnedz learned through his own recovery: trauma isolates, but healing often begins when people feel heard.
One of the most important steps in his recovery, he said, was finally opening up about his trauma to his family, beginning with his wife.
“It was hard for me to share. It took a few years,” he said. “Last Hanukkah we had a family meeting, and it was the first time my family heard my story from Tzuk Eitan. It was very meaningful to feel heard. With trauma, you feel very isolated, like nobody can understand you. For me, it started with the small community I had — my family, my friends, even my military team. I did a lot of body and mind therapy, but the sense of community was the strongest part of the work for me.”
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